Annual rate of change of the crop water deficit of grain maize during the growing season for the period 1985-2014 in Europe. The crop water deficit is the difference between the crop-specific water requirement (in this case grain maize) and available water through precipitation. The simulation is based on the JRC-MARS gridded meteorological data at 25 km resolution. Red colours show an increase of the gap between crop water requirement and the available water, blue colours indicate a reduction of the deficit. Areas where the seasonal crop water requirement exceeds regularly (i.e. in more than 90 % of the years) the available water (through precipitation) have been marked by hatches. Areas without hatches experience both deficit and surplus or only a surplus of water in their crop water balance. In this case, red colours refer to a reduced surplus, while blue colours indicate an increasing surplus of available water.

The crop water deficit was calculated as the difference between the total crop water requirement (in this case for grain maize) and the rainfall sum during the growing season. The growing season has been defined as the period between grain maize emergence and physiological maturity, as simulated by the WOFOST crop model. The WOFOST crop model has been used to simulate the total grain maize water requirement during the growing season for the period 1985 to 2014. Gridded JRC-MARS meteorological and crop data have been used to force the WOFOST crop model. Also the rainfall totals per growing season were calculated from the JRC-MARS gridded meteorological database.

Additional information

The resulting simulations are provided in geotiff file (trend values) and shapefile. The shapefile contains the information on the regions where the crop water requirement during the same period (1985-2014) frequently (i.e. in more than 90 % of years) exceeds the total rainfall during the growing season. The scientific publication presenting these results is in preparation.